Grieve the Segregation of Science

By S. Joshua Swamidass

This year is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a scientist working in the segregated city of Saint Louis, Dr. King’s legacy haunts me. He was an imperfect man, with many flaws. However, he did speak with uncommon clarity, calling us from our segregated world into an integrated reality. Approaching this anniversary in contemplation, I have been unsettled. For all the real progress that has been made, our world is still segregated.

Science is Segregated

Most conferences I attend are full of Asian and white scientists. Indians like me are common, even if we are a minority. It seems, nonetheless, that there are much fewer African Americans here. One study found that none of the science PhD’s in one year were awarded to blacks in a large number of scientific fields[1]. Among the general populace, there is also a gap in scientific knowledge [2], but the deficit in black science PhDs means that most black churches, for example those in Saint Louis, have never benefited from a scientist in their congregation. This is not how the world is meant to be. In early 2017, one conference of several hundred leaders in my field included just three black scientists. It was uncomfortable.

Some say that science is a grand cathedral, where we enter to worship God in a special place. If science is a cathedral, then this cathedral is segregated. Large portions of the Church are excluded from worship here.

The faith and science conversation, also, is characterized by the near total absence of African Americans [3]. Hundreds of voices clamor to be heard, but we struggle to identify even a single black voice. Almost all the theologians, scientists, and pastors engaged in the dialogue between faith and science are white. The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) itself embodies this pattern, with a nearly monochromatic slate of keynote speakers, authors, and members.

Sadly, the ASA is notable for being much less diverse than science at large, with fewer Asians, Hispanics and internationals than in the larger scientific community. African Americans, in particular, are essentially absent.

Where are the black Christians in science? What are their questions and concerns?

A common response to this line of interrogation is, “We are focused on faith and science questions, and leave questions of race to others.” To which I respond, “But have we even asked what their concerns are? What about the science students in the black Church?” The most meaningful responses have been sudden awareness, then honest grief. How is it that we have ignored such a large portion of the Church? We have not even asked them about their concerns.

I have been unable to let this go, and have continued to ask these questions. If science is a cathedral of worship, why isn’t the whole Church welcomed here? If the Church is our family, can we tolerate a segregated scientific world?

The Ethical Demands for Integration

In the shadow of Ferguson, I gathered this Fall with seminary professors and friends in Saint Louis. On a monthly basis, we met to discuss Dr. King’s sermons and writings at Concordia Seminary. Some of our first readings were The Ethical Demand for Integration and Paul’s Letter to the American Christian.

Just two weeks after our first meeting, the Stockely verdict was announced, and a police officer was acquitted. The streets outside my home exploded in protest. I walked onto Delmar Boulevard at night, unprepared for what I saw. My scientific training was worthless for the moment. On the street, watching the clash between non-violent protesters and the police, the scientist finds his limits. Science can neither name nor end injustice. I was reminded why Dr. King chose to study theology.

“But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress” (Paul’s Letter to the American Christian).

When Dr. King was decided to go graduate school, he was searching for resources with which to make sense of the segregated world. He found these resources in theology, not science.

A Theological Voice on Injustice

Dr. King understood the injustice of his world exactly where the origins debate is most contentious: Adam, sin, and the fall. Though Dr. King did not affirm a historical Adam, he came to understand the defining power of sin in our world. Sin is more than an individual wrongdoing, but also affects us corporately. With this “conservative” emphasis on sin, he also put forward a “liberal” value of caring for whole people, both souls and bodies.This brought him to a coherent theological voice on injustice. This theology was so central to King’s understanding that he spoke and wrote about it often.

The looming reality of sin and the Fall haunts Dr. King’s theology. Caught between fundamentalists and modernists, his theology of sin was a corrective to both liberal and conservative views. Uncomfortable with the pessimism of the fundamentalists, he did not believe the corruption of sin had totally erased God’s purposes, nor was it fully understood of individual actions alone. On the other hand, encountering the segregated world, he found the sinless optimism of the modernists incoherent. Progress into God’s Kingdom was clearly subverted by sin. This world was not as it should be; it was created for something greater. Sin included individual wrongs, but there was also a societal fall from God’s Kingdom purposes.

In our current moment, liberal theology is uncomfortable with the corporate guilt of “original sin,” but often echoes secular discourse on social justice and systemic injustice. Similarly, conservative theology affirms the doctrine of “original sin,” but resists naming anything but individual actions as sinful. Coming to a common language, perhaps working out the corporate nature of original sin might give us a better account of the segregated world. Instead of echoing or opposing secular rhetoric, we might recover a theological voice on injustice.

The Image and Kingdom of God

Dr. King was also motivated by a specific understanding of the Image of God. As is commonly remembered, he understood the Image of God as the grounding for both universal rights and universal dignity. When full humanity of Africans was questioned, Dr. King insisted on the universality of the Image of God on all people. In a segregated world that assaulted the personhood of all God’s children, Dr. King expounded a confident dignity bestowed on all by God.

Forgotten in our moment, Dr. King also understood the Image of God as a universal capability to respond to the call to justice. This belief constantly brought Dr. King into hopeful appeals to his most racist opponents. His appeals humanized them, declaring that even racists where made in the Image of God, and therefore capable of responding to the call to justice. Moreover, Dr. King believed that the Image of God made possible an integrated community, here on this earth. Even the most ardent of racists, Dr. King welcomed into the new society of which he dreamed. He loved his enemies, embracing them as family though they opposed him.

King’s understanding of creation grounded hope. Faced with violent segregationists, he believed that an integrated world was an attainable historical possibility. We were already created to live together in a beloved community. In his most famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” he dreamed of the Kingdom of God. This was a kingdom dream, where he imagined a kingdom of heaven on earth, an integrated world where we all lived as family. This kingdom family is that for which we are created.

He found hope in this unseen order to the world. This theology of creation gave resources to understand the depths of this world’s sinfulness. It also showed a better world was possible if we reached for it. Grounded in the universal of creation, also, he found a theological voice in the public square, engaging all of us, inside and outside the Church, with an appeal to the common good. The hope of Dr. King was not a pleasant disposition or calm certainty that things would “work out.” Instead, he was pressed forward in urgency, grieving the depths of the fall, but emboldened by our universal capacity to participate in God’s work to establish His Kingdom on earth.

Grieve the Segregation of Science

It is 50 years after Dr. King was assassinated, but our world is still segregated.

We pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and no one believes heaven is segregated. To pray for heaven to come to earth is to pray for integration.

We are still drawn to the Dream, to the unseen Kingdom family, but we are bound to the fallen world as we find it. To see the world honestly is to grieve the depths of our fall. We worship God in the grand cathedral of science. This cathedral, however, is segregated; large portions of the Church cannot enter to see the beauty here.

The urgency of our moment is fierce.

At a Veritas Forum this fall, my discontent spilled on to the stage. I confessed emptiness in the face of protests outside my home. In emptiness, I prayed for the Kingdom of God to come, for a glimpse of the Dream that is not found in science.I noticed an African American student, a young woman, in the center of the lecture hall. When the crowds died down after the forum, a group of us talked together. Tears flowed freely down her eyes. She was an atheist in science, unable to make sense of the young earth creationism of her family. The first scientist among them, her family did not know how to engage her questions. Still, the real presence of Jesus pursued her. Meeting a Christian in science who understood her path, she found the One who is greater than science, the One who rose from the dead. In Him she placed her trust.

Untamed and unexpected, the Spirit met us there. In our segregated scientific world, God is here. He sees those unseen, hears those unheard, and invites us into the unseen reality of His Kingdom family.

The American Scientific Affiliation has a storied history. In so many things, we have been faithful through the decades. We still, however, are segregated. Let us enter into truthful grief. Lament the segregated cathedral, and let discontent grow strong. Then, let us wonder. How could we welcome the full diversity of the Church into science? How might we integrate the grand cathedral of science?

S. Joshua Swamidass MD. PhD. is a physician, scientist, andAssistant Professor of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at WashingtonUniversity in Saint Louis. He leads a computational biology group thatstudies information at the intersection of biology, chemistry and medicine.

Josh also is a speaker for InterVarsity ChristianFellowship and Veritas Forums. Recently, he served as a Science Advisorfor AAAS Science for Seminaries, and now blogs at peacefulscience.org.

[6]King explains some of his nuanced position in Pilgrimage to Non-Violence, 1960. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/pilgrimage_to_nonviolence/

[7] For example, see What is Man? the first chapter of his first book, which started as an assignment in seminary, and then became a recurring sermon. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol6/11July1954WhatIsMan.pdf[8] An excellent overview of Dr. King’s theology of God’s Image is given by this book. Richard W. Wills, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Image of God (Oxford University Press, 2009).